Privacy Commissioner inquiry into manage my Health breach

The Privacy Commissioner has announced today that he will be conducting an Inquiry into the cyber security breach affecting Manage My Health Limited.

An Inquiry, under section 17(1)(i) of the Privacy Act, is the Privacy Commissioner’s usual mode of investigating public interest privacy issues.

“Given the scale of the incident, the sensitivity of the information and some of the systemic issues being identified, it’s clear to me we need to investigate the privacy issues involved”.

We are currently consulting with relevant parties on draft Terms of Reference as required by our legislation and expect to publish these details on 28 January.

“New Zealanders rightly expect any agency collecting, holding, using or storing their sensitive health information to maintain high standards of privacy and data protection. Our Inquiry will help determine whether appropriate security safeguards were in place and if not, why not. We will also look at what steps will be taken to prevent such an incident happening again”, said Mr Webster.